The tendency and the effectiveness of policy in marine accident occurring in the sea around Jeju island

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to aid in basic directions for the countermeasure against marine accidents by using the statistical data of Jeju Coast Guard from 1983 to 2012. Marine accidents of about 600~1,000 vessels was reported in all the waters around South Korea from 2000 to 2008. From 2009, these accidents increased rapidly and reached 1,600~2,000 vessels. Although marine accidents of longline fishing vessels did not show a big change prior to 1993, the number have increased steadily until 2007. This is considered a tendency that appears when longline vessels, using the Port of Sungsanpo as a base and operating in fishing grounds in the East China Sea, are converted to long-term fishing from short-term fishing for reasons such as cost reduction due to the sudden rise of oil prices and the performance improvement of the fishing vessels. The number of vessels in marine accidents decreased gradually from 1999 to 2002 and for nearly 7 years from 2002 to 2008, the annual average of marine accidents stayed at 97 vessels. This is seemed to be the result of a change in the policy of either the central or local government and largely associated with changes in the way of statistical processing. This tendency is resulted in lower number of the accidents due to careless navigation which can be viewed as a human error than the number of marine accidents due to poor maintenance as a cause of mechanical failure in the same period. The increase rate in the marine accidents of Jeju Island-based fishing vessels is greater than that of other area-based fishing vessels among the fishing vessels operating in coastal and near sea around Jeju Island each year.